This is a straight up pep talk for those who need it.
If you don’t need it? Don’t read it or just completely ignore it. Free will is a wonderful thing.
You know that trend on Instagram when people say ‘everyone talks about their recent wins so here are my flops’. You know those?
I have seen several of them with the same ‘flop’.
“My screen time is 12 hours a day.”
Half the day everyday.
I mean, I know this is very extreme and probably not normal but it warrants a conversation.
I’m not calling anyone out personally. We’re grown adults— do with your phone as you wish.
But I will for sure call it our culturally. This whole “I want to be more present and less addicted to my phone but I just can’t do it!”
This. This is what needs addressing.
We are the generation of mothers raising the next generation of children, artists, leaders, builders. Are we cool with this mass phone addiction situation?
Or are we just going to keep talking about how ‘I wish I could just turn the phone off and enjoy my kids and get chickens and read more and do jigsaw puzzles with them’…..
While never actually doing it?
How long does the phone addiction go on before the kids are grown up, out of the house and you’re looking back on these formative years wondering why the hell you couldn’t get a grip on it sooner?
If your kids mirror your phone behaviours when they’re 17, would you be ok with it?
Would you be ok with them asking Claude about every single decision?
Would you be ok with them crashing out over someone else’s holiday?
Would you be ok with them diluting their intuition to almost nothing because the phone and its contents have become their guru?
Would you be ok having to wait seven full ‘just wait a minute!’s before they looked up from their phone and answered your question?
Would you be ok with their dependence? Their inability to sit still? They shrunken attention span?
Would you be ok with them making the phone their idol like you do?
Would you be ok with them giving more attention to their device than the people they love the most?
Would you be ok with social media/phone usage harming their mental health and affecting their relationships and yet they don’t have the resolve to do something about it?
Would you be ok with them consuming short form content as a habit instead of reading novels and enjoying proper art?
Would you be ok with them not knowing who they are and what they want because it’s becoming so clouded by the algorithm?
Would you be ok with them having a fully hunched posture and poor neck lymph drainage because they sit slumped 70% of the day?
Would you be ok with them not accessing much original thought because their minds are just regurgitating whatever charged up information is on their feeds?
Would you be ok with your kids living in a full on phone addiction?
If the answer to any of these is ‘no’…. Then you’ve got to make sure your personal answer to these questions is ‘no’ too.
Yes. Social media and phones are always going to be apart of our lives. Yes, we oughta teach our children how to use them well, mindfully and how to use them as tools and not become enslaved by them.
But in order to show them a healthy relationship we have to have one.
I know there are a lot of mothers out there who love their social media presence, the way they can express and make money, but also long for a life where they can just zip themselves and their families up and live an ultra present, peaceful life beyond it all.
I know there are mothers who have plans to build to a certain level and then turn it all off and go off grid.
I know there are mothers who feel trapped by it.
I am not saying you need to chuck your phone in the bin, get a dumb phone, and live as if it all doesn’t exist.
I’m saying that you must, must must must, find a relationship with it all that genuinely sits right within your soul. You must be able to say that you have a grip on it. That you are in integrity with what you value. That you are not waiting for ‘one day’ but that you are sorting it today.
If you are a full on addict, seek help.
Delete the apps for a little.
OR just engage so much more fully with your real life, address the real sh*t going on for you, so that you are not numbing/escaping through your phone.
When you are right within yourself, within your life, you will not reach for it like you do now.
Get to that place.
Not tomorrow.
Not the next day.
Today.
Decide what phone relationship you are good with.
Decide what relationship with yourself, your mind, with creativity, originality, with time and presence and people… you are good with.
Because screen time isn’t just about distracted time— it affects everything. Our ability to be with life, to be with ourselves, to think original thoughts, to be bearably bored, to listen, to enjoy moments without anxiously wondering how to share them, to know what you want VS what you think will look cool on your feed.
Decide what is in integrity for you to model for your kids.
Maybe it’s 10 mins a day 3 x a day.
Maybe it’s emails etc only on laptop/desktop.
Maybe it’s not touching it at all except for certain hours.
Maybe it’s more streamlined work, more help, or just finding the discipline not to spend hours scrolling reels when you haven’t spent that long with those you love.
I don’t have the answers for you— I am still finding them for myself.
But what I do know is that we cannot let this enormous, additive screen time become normalised. We cannot wish for our children to live peacefully, knowing their own minds, in such with their true desires, beliefs and creative genius…. Meanwhile becoming robotic with it all ourselves.
What matters even more, is that we are not letting our phone usage make us worse mums and wives. Less regulated. More impatient. Feeling like nothing is ever right and everything is always wrong and that our husbands should be more like this and our homes should look more instagrammable…..
I read Yesteryear while on holidays recently. DAM the ending. I won’t spoilt it. But it was heartbreaking and infuriating.
(If you haven’t read it, it’s about a conservative christian turned Trad wife and it draws from some popular examples in the influencer space).
One thing I wish the writer would have done differently, is make the main character more relatable to the everyday mother who is letting the phone steal too much of these precious days— too much of her energy— too much of her patience.
I imagine readers would look at the main character Natalie and think to themselves “well, she is so extreme, I am nothing like her”…. seeing her as faraway, not close enough to warrant drawing caution from.
But so many mothers, even without enormous followers, are completely entrapped by the online game. They’re desperate to be like someone else. They yell at their kids if they walk in a shot. They’re image mattering more than life between the 4 walls.
Yes, expressing online can be life changing in wonderful ways. It can be healthy, and balanced, and beautiful.
But we have to make it so.
And the hardest part of having a truly balanced life? It cannot be performed. You have to care more about living it than telling the world about it. You have to care more about how it feels than about how it looks. You have to care more that your family knows, than your audience does.
You have to care more about your actual life, than what it looks like to strangers.
It is thankless, humbling like motherhood often is.
Integrity isn’t praised a lot. That’s the whole point. It’s not praised because it’s meant to be its own reward. When your head hits the pillow each night and you can say that despite being totally imperfect, you nudged closer to a life that is fully aligned with your values.
Our kids are growing too fast.
“I’ll get a grip on it one day soon” is not soon enough.
The years are going faster.
There is too much life to be lived.
Take time to ask yourself where you’re being caught up in stuff that doesn’t matter to you, where you are dropping the ball with what does.
Ask yourself what your ‘sweet spot looks like and get yourself there.
Ask yourself which parts of your life are not your own— maybe you wanna live somewhere because instagram made it look cool.
If there were no one to showcase it all to, what would you choose differently?
You can push reset at any time.
It’s not your fault that the online world is noisy and that big tech companies manipulate your attention.
But it is 100% your responsibility with how you interact with it.
Social media is not an escape room.
You have full control of it all.
It can be a great addition to the life you’re building, but make sure it stays in its rightful place.
Do it even if nobody knows it.
Do it if nobody claps.
Do it without needing to be important or significant.
Do it without making it a program.
Do it for your own sense of integrity and because your home is completely shaped by you.
Do it so that in 5 years you can look back and say ‘no regrets’.
This is the peace we’re after.
Lotsa love, PK XX
Every single sentence of this!! Gosh I love how you write with such crystal clear clarity. This was incredibly powerful and I hope it spreads far and wide for the entire online ocean to read.